to think that nurses working in the UK should have a good standard of spoken English?

[AKMD]

I had a serious op a couple of weeks ago followed by a week's stay on a ward. The day I was due to go home I had a nurse in charge of my bay who was from another EU country but whose English wasn't to a high enough standard to enable her to:

a) be handed over to properly by the nurse leacing form the night shift; she was continually getting confused over which patient was which and what was wrong with them;
b) explain to me how to change my wound dressings;
c) tell me what the drugs I was being sent home with were for;
d) answer the question I asked rather than a question that I hadn't but was vaguely related to a few words I said;
e) communicate effectively with the very old and confused (dementia?) woman in the bed next to me, who got really upset because she didn't understand what was happening to her.

AIBU to think that nurses working in the UK should have a high enough standard of spoken English to do a, b, c, d and e? In my whole stay I only met one native English nurse but the last one was the only one who had a language problem.

a few months ago i had to plug the ecg machine into the mains for a nurse who was to give me an ecg - she did not know that the machine worked from the mains and her language skills were such that she was unable to understand my explanation of how to plug into the mains -
2 problems here
basic skills
and language
i thought that maybe she was not actually a nurse but another nurse came over and took over the situation (and did the ecg test) and complained to me about the difficulty of working with people who had 'EU qualifications'

now, how do these people have jobs where their skills are so inadequate yet
newly qualified nurses throught our university system cannot even get an interview

mollymole that is shocking. At least with changing the wound dressings I had watched her and the other nurses doing it every day so I pretty much knew what to do.

Yanbu. A while ago, I had to take my small nephew to hospital after a bump on the head at school. The nurse in A&E could barely speak English and had a really thick accent. Poor DN was small frightened and hurt and didn't know what she was saying. I had trouble, so couldn't help much. The nurse picked him up bodily and man handled him into the position she wanted him to be in. I was furious.

yanbu, but the same goes for doctors (had one asian dr not understanding the symptoms), and to checkout staff at supermarkets.

quite frustrating.

I have come across this. I don't know if she was a qualified nurse, but she was responsible for doing the pre operation form. She could read the questions out and understand simple answers, but nothing else. For example, she didn't understand what athletes foot was - a relevant answer from me considering the op.

Her standard of English might have been fine for working in a shop for example, but in healthcare a greater subtle understanding of English is required.

Also accompanied a friend to an emergency psychiatric appointment with a psychiatrist whose accent was so thick he was difficult to understand. He got annoyed when we had to both ask him to repeat himself many times.

With a psychiatric assessment - which it was - building up a rapport with the patient can help you get more accurate answers and make a better assessment. This Dr had no chance of doing this.

I've only had the odd problem with a healthcare assistant rather than nurses - doctors with strong accents have IME always been willing to write words down and type things into Google just so we can agree we're talking about the same issue (I'm deaf so have problems with lots of fluent English speakers).

Though recently I needed MrNC to call NHSDirect for me and he had no end of problems - highlights of the first call included him saying "No, you can't talk to her - she is deaf. D.E.A.F. No, she won't be able to HEAR you. Her EARS do not work! Do you know what ears are? Yes, OK, I will call the out of hours GP..." followed by ooh service putting him through to allegedly a real GP. Though given the conversation then included "she has pain in her pelvis joints - PELVIS - the bit that holds her legs on... no, she's deaf. No, really, there is no point in you talking to her, yes, she's right here (I tell doc I'm still deaf), her ears do not work.. ." and culminated in MrNC, the most calm, patient, polite man in the world, eventually asking "Are you really a qualified doctor?

The GP who turned up soon after said he had no idea what their problem was, was lovely (and spoke fluent English), and said many of his house calls could probably be avoided if the phone conversations were better. I'm just glad I didn't have to do those calls on a textphone, given the number of numpties who just panic and hang up when the relay operator talks to them...

christ notcitrus sounds appalling but also quite comical

YADNBU

I too have worked in the NHS and come accross this the whole time.

One of the lows of a relatives recent stay in hospital (and there were many) was when he needed help with a tracheostomy (I think) one nurse came over saw she needed help and called a colleague the two of them preceeded to talk to each other the entire time over his head in what was I'm guessing an Indian language then turn and walk away.

they did not say one word to the patient

very sad and incredibly isolating (for those that don't know a lot of people with a tracheostomy have trouble talking so you are isolated anyway

notcitrus this is totally off-subject but how does a textphone work?

i went to see a consultant in hospital and literally could not make head or tail of what he was telling me

i had to wait a week or so to get an appointment to see my GP to ask him to explain what was what.

could have been potentially dangerous if he had been telling me not to do something/to do something with immediate effect.

I often wonder how people who cant speak the lingo get through job interviews tbh

OP YANBU. I've got to say though the last time I called the hospital I couldn't understand the receptionist - finally DH had to get on the phone to translate, it was a Glaswegian accent

Just a quick note that with respect to EU requirements, you can already discriminate against someone for not having a standard of spoken English to enable them to do a job, even if they are from an EU country.

This is currently being beefed up in the next version of the Professional Qualifications Directive which is the EU legislation allowing portability of professional qualifications between EU countries. At the moment the directive requires that any language requirements must be proportionate to what the professional is doing - a distinction in language ability can already be drawn, for example, between a doctor undertaking research in a laboratory and one treating patients. It's already recognised that there is a problem particularly in the medical professions - the EU is consulting on exactly this subject at the moment and new legislation with more stringent language requirements, particularly for medical professions, is due to be introduced by the end of 2011.

With respect to non-EU nurses and doctors though, I'm inclined to think that BakeliteBelle has hit it on the head.

AKMD - two ways - 1. you dial a special 'Minicom' or textphone number and when it rings on another textphone then someone answers and you get to type at each other with your words appearing on a screen. In reality except for certain huge organisations, the textphone has been shoved in a drawer or no-one knows what to do and it doesn't work.

So what I usually use is what used to be called TypeTalk and is now TextDirect - you dial a prefix and then your number, and on a good day your screen displays 'Operator connected... dialling... ring... ring... explaining TypeTalk...GA' (go ahead), so I press a button, talk at the person, say Go Ahead when I'm done, and then whatever the person says gets typed by the operator and appears on my screen. If I couldn't talk then I'd be typing as well and the op reading it out, which would slow everything down further.

When it works, it works great, only slightly stilted. But an awful lot of the time the op gets as far as explaining they will be relaying what you say to a deaf person and they hang up, or even before the op gets to speak as BT have decided to insert a recorded message saying something like "please hold the line for a TextDirect call", and of course most people hear a recording and hang up. My record was over 50 hangups and people insulting the operator... when I was trying to book a hearing test for my son - my HV ensured that clinic got bollocked beyond belief!

The system also runs on ancient analogue modem technology so can miss bits. Ideally we'd get with the 21st century and be able to integrate phones with instant messenger so I could just dial someone via my laptop (there's no mobile version...), but the various pilots of that haven't got far yet. There were a couple private companies providing a similar service that you could use for meetings and stuff but they were both shit and soon went bankrupt.

My pet peeve is forms requiring phone details with no space to put the text prefix in (18002) or to say 'do not phone me - text this no. or preferably email this address'. Luckily I can use an amplified phone to make a short call if really necessary and usually figure out I can have a GP appt at whatever time I repeat until they confirm I've understood, and most stuff I can do online, but anything involving pregnancy and children seems to assume you have a phone, so I just give out MrNC's details and he contacts me as need be.

Actually my real pet peeve is people who think that because I can speak beautiful RP English, I must actually be able to hear them, or the fact that I can hear fire alarms/traffic noise means I can understand speech. Yes, I can understand people, mainly men, with southernUK accents who I know who are in a quiet place who are saying stuff I'm expecting, when I have my hearing aids on and I'm not tired or in pain. If you're a female Australian in a noisy call centre not telling me what I'm expecting to hear, or I'm in labour, then it's terp time. And no, I don't understand BSL more than GCSE level, so don't get a BSL interpreter without asking me first - I need speech-to-text relay (basically a woman with a laptop typing!) Or just poor old MrNC again...

[and breathe...]

YANBU. It's bad enough being ill and in hospital without a frustrating and potentially dangerous language barrier as well.

Living in London I've come across this quite a bit.

On one occasion I had an outpatients at the hospital - the doctor clearly couldn't speak english and was struggling (and was swearing in her language) and in the end I was so scared of her I decided I would not let her examine me. However, no need 0- she called me by way of beckoning her finger and I was really fucking nervous at this point but what she did was show me out of the fire exit door straight into the street! OMG - I knew she was swearing as I speak her language.

When I gave birth it was one of those horror stories once recovering on ward after c-section - the nurses were nothing short of abusive and lazy so they passed me onto a japanese midwife - she didn't speak much english but she was fantastic and got up and running enough to be discharged. Dunno how she did but I'll never forget her hard work and dedication in what must have been a difficult environment for her and she (and I) managed to communicate.

I have no issues draling with accents - but if someone has no idea of the language then it puts them at a disadvantage for sure.

I worked in Romania, and unless things have changed drastically since I left, nurses there had minimal medical training and were more like auxiliaries. Certainly not a graduate profession.

URdefinatelyNBU- I work within health and social care and have faced this problem all the time. Its potentially very dangerous and it makes me quite cross. Ive also incountered it as a patient myself, with a consultant who could barely string a sentance together and was misunderstanding literally everything i said!!

This is happening throughout healthcare, not just in nursing. The large pharmacy chains have discovered that pharmacists in Spain, Poland, Czech Republic, etc are paid much less in their home countries so will come here and work for less than native UK pharmacists. As their healthcare systems are so different their experience, work standards and responsibilities, etc can differ greatly. Officially they work with an experienced pharmacist until they achieve set standards and are proficient to work alone but I know of one chap, supervised by a friend of mine, who she refused to sign off and the company just transferred him to someone more easily bullied amenable

I am aware of several miscommunications with patients due to language skills which could have caused issues if it were not for other staff intervening.

YANBU and this is a real issue at some hospitals. As others have said, healthcare workers from outside the EU have to pass a language test, so even if their accents are strong they have reached an acceptable level of language competence. With EU workers, it is up to the employer to ensure they are able to do the job and some seem to accept (perhaps out of desperation) a very poor standard of English.

I had a horrible experience after my 20 week scan, which showed my baby had talipes (which is a soft marker for a range of chromosomal and genetic conditions). The (Italian) obstetrician could barely speak English, told me I was very high risk, and kept saying, "You want abortion?" I kept asking her questions, including my statistical risk, if she could refer me to a counsellor, if she could give me written information, and she just kept shaking her head and saying, "You want abortion?" I was in tears, begging her to explain to me different scenarios, but she couldn't understand the questions let alone provide answers.

I was lucky: I had worked in maternity services, was working in a hospital, and was able to get the answers I needed. But many women would just have taken this poor communication as a recommendation that they terminate. dd was born perfectly healthy, and 4 years after her birth the hospital rang to ask me about my experiences. They were doing an audit of similar cases because there had been some 'problems with sub-optimal care', they told me.

I truly don't believe that someone who can barely speak English should be working as an obstetrician in a Fetal Medicine Unit. The job absolutely requires communication skills of a very high degree.

That is so true timid. I have had to translate for patients when a patient myself. Once, while working, I was left to supervise a probationary person and was a gibbering wreck by the end of a shift trying to stop them accidentally killing someone. As to the big companies I have heard 'keep your mouth shut if you value your career'.

Keep your mouth shut if you value your career could have been the motto for the pharmacy multiple I worked for!

In this country pharmacists have a legal responsibility to ensure that a prescription is appropriate as well as correctly dispensed so if the doctor puts the decimal point in the wrong place and accidentally prescribes 10x the dose for your child (which I have seen happen more than once!) hopefully the pharmacist will spot it. In some other countries, I believe Poland may be one, there is no such responsibility so the pharmacist gives whatever is on the presription without checking its appropriateness. I do wonder how many patients have suffered errors in their meds in order to improve profits for these companies.

I had a similar experience after I had an emcs with dd1. They had no room on the cs ward so they put me in with the mums who had all had normal births. Dd was crying to be fed and this bloody nurse kept telling me I had to get her and try to feed her myself, which was fine except I couldn't move to get out of bed, being numb from the waist down from the cs. She couldn't understand me when I tried to get her to help me. Luckily another nurse came in that was actually English and realised what was going on. Dd was bawling for a feed and I was pretty emotional anyway and slightly panicky by this point. Not a good start after a horrible birth.